


thanatopsis

by philosoverted



Series: Thanatopsis [1]
Category: Helix
Genre: Anana Plans on Keeping Her Somewhat-Reformed Mercenary Boyfriend Thanks, Babyfic, F/M, Ilaria Is Why Nobody Can Have Nice Things, pre-season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 17:26:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11445570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philosoverted/pseuds/philosoverted
Summary: Sergio doesn’t get very far before the leash of his past pulls tight, and these days he’s got a lot more on the line. Pre-season 2, canon-compatible (mostly).





	thanatopsis

Twelve months after Arctic BioSystems, Julia Walker shows up unannounced on their doorstep wearing a Moncler coat and an apologetic expression.

“Hello Sergio,” she says when he opens the door, in that meek voice that makes her seem much more fragile than he knows her to be. “Can I come in?”

Even while keeping a low profile he’s heard the rumors and her two-thousand-dollar parka isn’t helping much. “Nice coat,” he remarks pointedly. “Hope the CDC is letting you write that off as a business expense.”

Julia crosses her arms. “I know you don’t have any reason to trust me, but I’m interested in acquiring your help.”

He narrows his eyes, shifting his weight so his body takes up more space in the doorway. “You’re right. I  _don’t_ have any reason to trust you.”

Suddenly he tenses: a soft sound comes from further inside the house, recognisable after a moment as a baby’s hiccuping cry.

Surprise flashes across Julia’s face, followed shortly by something like remorse, or sadness. “I’m sorry. I… I didn’t realize you have a child.”

“The announcement must’ve gotten lost in the mail,” Sergio says acerbically.

Anana rounds the corner into the kitchen with a baby at her shoulder, surveying the way Sergio’s letting in a windchill of minus twenty with disapproving eyes. “Sergio? There’s this thing called a generator bill.” Her eyes narrow as she gets close enough to see around him. “You-  _you_ were at Arctic BioSystems-”

“She’s just leaving.” Sergio's hand tightens on the doorknob. There’s a threatening edge to his voice, to the tense set of his shoulders as he starts to close the door.

“Ilaria knows where you are,” Julia says urgently, risking her fingers by grabbing the door jamb. “And when they come for you they’re  _not_ going to knock and ask nicely.”

The thin veil of tolerance drops from Sergio’s face, replaced abruptly with cold, dispassionate focus. Opening the door, he takes a menacing step forward until his face is inches from Julia’s. “What is it you  _want_."

Julia doesn’t seem particularly intimidated. She looks at him with earnest eyes, brushing thick hair from her face with a finger that glints in the light. “Like I said. Your help.”

The unmistakable click of a pistol fills the short silence. When Anana steps back into view she’s no longer holding a baby; instead, her fingers curl around a gun leveled slightly above the height of Sergio’s shoulder. “The only help he’s giving you is by standing _right where he is_ , ‘cause as soon as he moves I’ll have a clear shot.”

Julia’s eyes flick to Anana and then back to Sergio. “Chances are good they don’t know about your baby. I can help. I can get Anana a passport and papers, help them disappear before it’s too late.” She touches his arm. “You and I both know Ilaria won’t put nearly as much effort into finding her if you split up, especially if they don’t know about your child.”

“You know what I’m capable of or you wouldn’t be here,” Sergio says, baring his teeth. “ _Don’t_ give me a reason to make this personal.”

“You have my word,” Julia says evenly.

“I’ll shoot you both if you don’t shut up,” Anana snaps, adjusting her grip on the gun. “You are  _not_ taking him back to work for those people.”

Julia looks at her over Sergio’s shoulder. “I don’t work for them.”

“ _Bullshit_.”

“If she was here on Ilaria business she wouldn’t be alone,” Sergio says, still facing Julia. “They don’t send single operatives for extraction jobs and I’m more  _useful_ to them if you’re alive.”

Julia purses her lips, looking a little guilty. “It’s true that I’m a part of Ilaria, but I’m  _not_ working for them. I’m trying to change them from the inside, keep them from making decisions that could have consequences all over the world, even here. I have a plan, I just need someone I can trust.”

Anana gestures at her with her gun. “So you pick  _Sergio_?”

Julia laughs. “I can see why you like each other,” she admits, looking back and forth between Sergio, who’s still blocking the doorway with a mutinous expression, and Anana, who’s still pointing a gun at her head.

After a moment she sighs and rubs a thumb over where her prosthetic finger meets her hand. “To answer your question, I picked Sergio because he’s one of the few people left in my life with something to lose. Some people would call that a liability, but to me it means he’s got something to fight for. And because… I have access to the sort of information that tells me he’s about to lose it.” Her mouth tightens in sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

Anana takes a step forward and places a hand on Sergio’s shoulder. “ _Save_ your apology. You just admitted you want him because you’ve got leverage on him, because of his  _family_ , so you’ll forgive me if I tell you to go  _fuck_ yourself.”

“At least I know that making sure somebody’s family is  _safe_ is a much better way to barter for their help than torturing their lover and taking away their  _baby_ ,” Julia snaps, and then she sighs, face softening as she refocuses her attention on Sergio. “If you help me with this I promise I’ll get you out. Full immunity.“ She meets Anana’s eyes over his shoulder. “Your family too.”

A long moment passes.

Sergio steps aside and allows Julia to pass through.

“We can leave in the morning,” Julia says, setting down her pack. She touches his arm and doesn’t comment on it when he flinches back from her fingers. “Take your time.”

–

Anana doesn’t follow him when he pushes past her and closes the bedroom door, not right away: instead, she digs out blankets and a pillow for a guest she’d rather throw out in the snow and tosses them on the couch.

Julia smiles at her, looking grateful. “Thank you.”

Anana’s hands clench. She stares at Julia for a moment, jaw tight, and stalks down the hall to the bedroom.

She’s not sure what she expects to find when she presses the door open: someone she can yell at, if she’s honest with herself, but it’s hard to yell at a man staring out the window with his infant daughter cradled against his chest.

Sighing, Anana crosses the room and perches beside him on the bed’s edge. “You know I can’t stay angry when you’re holding her like that."

“Here.” He gently hands Atuat over to her. “Now you can be as angry as you want.”

Atuat’s little fists press against her, pink fingers opening and closing around the fabric of Anana’s blouse. Wordlessly Anana undoes the buttons halfway down and moves her daughter’s head to her breast.

For a minute or two there’s only silence, and the silence makes Anana feel like she’s sitting next to a stranger; she bites her lip and exhales sharply through her nose, eyes prickling with futile tears. “You know what really gets me? The plan was if they came for you we’d disappear  _together_.” She doesn’t need to say what’s changed: she’s holding it. “And now… you’ll either get yourself  _killed_ or they’ll make you think this was a  _lie_. That we’re better off without you. Maybe you’ll listen to them and decide you don’t  _want_ to come back.”

Sergio glances at her and then looks down. His lashes are damp; there’s something so vulnerable in it, in the way he swallows thickly. When he responds she can tell he’s struggling to keep a level tone of voice. “You’ve confused me with someone who left months ago because he knew this was coming and wasn't too _selfish_ to give a damn.”

“That guy sounds like an asshole looking for reasons to leave." Anana shakes her head. “He’s not the one I’m in love with.”

He smiles, just a fraction. “Different asshole?”

“Yeah,” she murmurs. “Comes across all tough until you see him around a baby.”

Atuat curls and stretches, reflexive movements accompanied by soft contented sounds. Anana lifts her with a hand behind her small head and passes her over to Sergio. He gives a long, uneven exhale as his daughter settles against him, tension bleeding from his face.

Anana slides her arm around the back of his waist and lets her head rest against his shoulder. “I could just arrest you,” she says, almost wistful. “You’d be safe in jail.”

Sergio huffs a laugh. “You’ve obviously never been to prison. Besides, Ilaria controls over ninety percent of the correctional facilities in the world. I  _might_ be in there two days before they fish me out, a week tops.”

“Don’t know why I’m surprised,” Anana says darkly, rubbing a palm along his back. “Some days I think if I’d known how much trouble you’d be I would’ve left you out on the ice.”

Sergio lifts a brow. “You handcuffed me,  _unconscious_ , to your coffee table. I’m  _pretty sure_ you knew.”

“I knew you were trouble, I just didn’t think I’d  _like_ you so much.”

“I get that a lot,” he admits without the slightest hint of false modesty, his teasing smile showing off his very white teeth: a charming feature Anana suspects has gotten him into all sorts of places where false modesty would be equally inappropriate.

“Idiot,” she mutters fondly.

After a moment she lifts her head from his shoulder and circles her arms around him, fingers wrapping around the hand at his chest that’s holding Atuat.

“You better come back,” she says in a low voice. “I don’t want to have to explain to her why you’re not here, that I don’t even know if you’re  _dead_ , so do whatever it is you have to do and come  _home_.”

–

In the morning he hoists his bag over his shoulder and waits beside Julia’s snowmobile while Anana rummages in her pockets. “Yours are probably behind the couch,” she mutters, fishing out her goggles and shoving them against his chest. “Take mine.”

Sergio drapes them around his neck without comment, the ghost of a smile on his lips. She can grumble all she wants; there’s a deep well of affection behind it that’s never far from the surface. 

He brushes a gloved hand against her cheek. He can’t say what he wants to. Everything he says becomes a lie, eventually, when he’s forced to choose between his word and his self-interests: but if he doesn’t say it, if it stays on his tongue, he can keep it safe.

He compromises.

_“Não sou nada sem você.”_

She leans closer and kisses him lightly on the lips. “Which means?”

He smiles against her mouth. “Learn Portuguese.”

“Learn Inuktitut.” Anana kisses him again, fully this time, fingers on his jaw. “Don’t forget about us.”

He doesn’t.

He locks the memory away in a place even sodium pentothal would have difficulty reaching and goes back to work.

**Author's Note:**

> I love the women in this show so much. I love how Julia is ruthless _and_ gentle (and ruthless in her gentleness). She's a pragmatist with heart, a trait that’s perhaps her greatest weakness and one Ilaria heavily exploits. 
> 
> And I love how Anana never, not _once_ falls for Sergio's bullshit, which is so much more than I ever expected from this show, and I love how fond she is of him anyway because he might be willing to do her bodily harm but he's not so bad once you know how to deal with him. (He comes stamped with “CAUTION" and “HANDLE WITH CARE", and probably also “THIS SIDE UP" and “DO NOT USE SHARP OBJECTS TO OPEN". Anana's simply the only person who bothers to read the labels; in a college AU she'd be the one reading the instructions to assemble furniture from Ikea and get it right the first time. _Idiot, it says right there that HH faces out when it attaches to CC. It's not my fault you can't read!_ )
> 
> Also, Sergio. He wouldn't know how to be a parent, but from the moment he meets that kid you've got to believe he'll flat-out murder anyone to keep his girl from going through the hell he grew up in, not to mention keeping Anana from having to go through the hell she grew up with. Like… you wanna talk about individuals who'll go full Liam Neeson? Here's your dude.
> 
> Still - he's good at what he does, and I bet a lot of the time he enjoys it - the adrenaline, the violence, the ability to have some power even on a tight leash. That's all he's known: it seems perfectly clear that some days trying to find a purpose and direction in a quiet remote village would be enough to keep him lying awake in bed fighting everything in him not to pack a bag and leave in the middle of the night. 
> 
> And yet... I like to think human nature is at least a little malleable, and that a person's past doesn't always dictate their future. "You can be the man you want, not the man they made you."
> 
> (Also... I apologize for how easily this slots into canonical season 2. My personal canon is that he breaks a lot of fucking bones, is in traction for four months, and eventually makes it back to the Arctic where he spends years struggling with self-loathing and doubt, not quite ever giving up, because _these people are his home_. That's the sort of story _I_ want to see and so very seldom do.)


End file.
